February 23, 2012

SandBox Comments: Aspen Daily News "Right Door will remain independent"

Andrew Travers:
"A planned merger of The Right Door and the Aspen Valley Medical Foundation has fizzled due to an improved financial footing of the substance-abuse treatment organization, as well as philosophical differences between the nonprofits.

The Right Door, a nonprofit that provides counseling and services to treat substance abuse, had been slated to close last year due to financial difficulties. To keep it afloat, the medical foundation last fall began attempting to integrate The Right Door under its management.

The organizations held numerous meetings throughout the fall and the beginning of this year, crafting a management agreement. But both sides decided recently to scrap the plan. They had been attempting to merge the medical foundation’s Aspen Hope Center, which focuses on suicide prevention and mental health services, with The Right Door’s substance abuse treatment.

“Once we got more involved in their approach and ours, that’s when we decided it wasn’t a good match,” said medical foundation director Kris Marsh.

She said the differing treatment approaches of the organizations proved too different. While the Hope Center relies primarily on professional counseling, The Right Door’s case management services focus on counseling and transitioning clients with drug and alcohol problems into 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous.

Marsh and Right Door board president Michael Campbell said that attempting to mesh the approaches would be ineffective.

“We both came to the conclusion that we work better as complementary organizations,” Campbell said. “Bigger is not necessarily better....” (Read more? Click title)


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